Tip-Toeing Through Van Til’s Apologetic with Jon Kaus

Opening Remarks and Conference Announcements

Welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host Eli Ayala, and I have had a busy weekend. I just came back from Indiana, back home to North Carolina. I was speaking at the Rethinking Hell Conference, which was super fun.

I got to meet Chris Date, which anyone who is familiar with the world of apologetics and theology, he's got a great channel over there at, well I guess, I the ministry that he runs is Rethinking Hell, and I was one of the speakers and I was representing the traditional view of hell, the good old fun eternal conscious torment perspective, not a very positive topic to discuss, but I was representing the traditional view and I was able to also represent a presuppositional take on how to interact with objections against Christianity within the context of discussions on hell.

So it was super awesome and won the video of the presentation I gave is available. I'll make sure to share larger portions of it as I've just shared a clip on my YouTube channel. Folks definitely want to check that out.

Well also, just to give a heads up, it is November. In December, I think December 1st, I'll be having Jeff Durbin on, which I'm super excited about. I tried for a really long time to get him. He's super busy.

As you guys know, if you're familiar with Apologia Church and the ministries that they're involved in, I'm happy that Jeff is going to be coming on. It's locked in, it's happening, so super excited about that.

Also, I just want to, and I'm going to be saying this throughout our show today, just reminding people of the conference, the Epic Online Presupp Conference. I will be speaking. I have Dr. Chris Bolt, Dr. Jason Lyle, Matt Slick of CARM .org, and Joshua Pillows.

We're going to be covering various elements of the presuppositional approach. I'm giving an overview. Jason Lyle is speaking about how to use evidence within a presuppositional framework. Chris Bolt will be talking about the history of transcendental arguments and the uniqueness of Van Til's argument.

Matt Slick will be discussing how to apply presuppositional methodology to the cults. And Joshua Pillows is going to walk us through how to answer objections to the presuppositional methodology, and he'll cover more popular objections as well as some of the more philosophically rigorous objections as well.

So I just want to let people know, I'm going slowly on purpose because I know people are coming in, but there are eight days to sign up. Eight days to sign up. The conference is on November 12, but there are eight days to sign up.

What you want to do is you want to go to revealedapologetics .com, click on the Presupp U drop-down menu, and you could RSVP your spot to see the conference. It's going to be from 10 a .m. in the morning to 4 30 p .m., and each of the speakers will have time slots, so when you get that schedule, when I send that schedule out, you'll know the times to come and listen to each respective speaker.

So this also is an attempt to raise money for the ministry. It is expensive to maintain a website, to do what I'm doing, and to do it well. So if you are interested in supporting Revealed Apologetics, this is one of the ways you can do it, and it would be greatly, greatly appreciated.

Introducing Jon Kaus and His Background in Presuppositional Apologetics

All right, well, without further ado, let me remove this from the screen, and I am super excited to have my guest on today. My guest's name is John Kaus, and I heard a lot about him from multiple sources.

There was some buzz on YouTube about this young guy who's really good at explaining a presuppositional approach, and of course I had the author of Every Believer Confident. I think his name is Mark Farnham, I think, and he also spoke very highly of my guest tonight.

So I'm super excited to have him on, and he's going to unpack for us Van Til's apologetic as we tiptoe through the transcendental argument. But before we do that, welcome to Revealed Apologetics, John.

It's awesome to have you.

Yeah, thanks for having me on. I'm excited to walk through this. I don't get a lot of dialogue on Van Til's apologetics, so I kind of live in my own world academically. So it's always fun to just have fellowship, talk through it.

Well, that is super awesome. And before we went live, just for my audience, John was so nice to rub it in my face that he's got something really special behind him. What looks like these generic books and binders is actually something pretty cool.

What do you got behind you there, John?

So in 2008, it was 13, I contacted David Bonson, Greg Bonson's son, about just if he had any books with just Bonson's notes in it or anything I could use just to read more. And God was good, very good.

And he sent me basically these are all the notes from recorded lectures he's done over the years. And then I went through the binders because there's a bunch of papers from like when he was at Westminster.

So a lot of theological papers he wrote there, papers on Wittgenstein that he did for Frame and Frame's class, for Van Til and then USC and there's other stuff as well. So it's like a thousand pages right here.

Of Bonson's personal lecture notes that are unpublished?

All unpublished. One of them is it's like 65 pages. So Van Til asked him to do On the Nature of Proof. And this was just I'm looking left because I have two screens and your face is here. And my screen that I'm sharing is going to be here.

So no worries. I'm not looking at something.

Same thing when I'm looking down, I'm looking at you. But when I'm looking up, I'm looking, it looks like I'm looking at you, but I can't see you because I'm looking directly at the camera.

So anyway, but yeah, there's a 65 page paper in there. And Van Til's comment is like, wow, this is this is way more than I expected. Like, please come to my office. You know, it's good. It's good stuff.

So someday it'll be published.

All right. Well, hopefully before I die, I'd love to read some of that stuff. That's the goal. All right. Well, why don't you tell folks very briefly about yourself? Who are you? What got you into presuppositionalism?

And then we'll jump right into your presentation. I'm super excited to hear what you have to say. So I want to talk a little bit about yourself.

Yeah. So I became a Christian in 2014 ish. What I witnessed, too, by my football coach, a defensive coordinator, and got really into young earth creation. And I still love it to this day. That was my first love intellectually.

I was an evidentialist, not knowingly, just, you know, it's just what everyone did. And then in 2009, I got the book, The Ultimate Proof of Creation by Jason Lyle. And I remember reading about a year before that, reading Norman Geisler's summary of presuppositional apologetics in I forget the book now.

And I remember thinking before he got to the critique, thinking, this sounds great. And even looking back on it now, it's not a very good summary, but it was it was just so revelational for me, even through his tainted view that anyway, so my heart was ready for it.

I just didn't have it yet. Sure. And then I read Lyle's book and I'm very grateful for that book. It was helpful in a number of ways. But in the intro or the dedication, he mentions Bonson. Right. Who is this guy?

And so I actually got into Van Til through Bonson, which is probably pretty common for people now. OK, but through Bonson. So the first book I read was Van Til's Apologetic. So I just I just dove right into the into the deep end.

And then then I figured out that I found out there are other books. And then it just started this whole research that and then I started teaching apologetics at a classical Christian school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Awesome. 2012, my family and I moved from Minnesota there. Now we're actually back. Just moved back last year. OK. Anyway, so I taught apologetics for a number of years there. I taught logic, formal logic there with systematic theology and philosophy and writing.

And then so right now, though, I'm a CFO at a rent to own company. And so I do a lot of numbers and efficiency and operations and that that stuff.

So a good opportunity came up in your black belt presupposition list, just in case the opportunity calls for it.

It's an addiction. I can't get away from it.

All right. Well, that's awesome. Well, I can definitely resonate with that. Yeah, I just simply love reading presupposition. I mean, I like reading other books as well. I mean, I like to be well read, but there's just something about a good presuppositional book, you know, a Van Til or Bonson or even a frame with some of the differences I might have.

I just it's just so insightful and I appreciate what they have to say. But but let's jump right into this. You have a presentation you'd like to give. And I'm super excited to just give it over to you and just listen to you present your material.

So are you ready to do that? Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great.

The Basic Components of a Van Tilian Proof

So I actually gave I gave a eight part Sunday school at my church on apologetic. And so I go through a kind of a history of Van Til and apologetics. And then I critique evidentialism. I critique also frame and I think it might be lecture three.

Then I critique properly basic beliefs and people from a particular book that's that's teaching basically a planning a disciple. And they basically just to set up, I think it's helpful to set up in the back because that's what we everyone is living and breathing.

Sure. To critique that and then to contrast it then with what I think is the correct.

Method. I would like to have you on at a separate time to talk about properly basic beliefs. I'd love to hear your critiques of those. I think that's an interesting topic.

Yeah. So if you go to if you go to Christ Church Twin Cities, their YouTube page, Christ Church Twin Cities, you'll have they'll have the eight part apologetics talk. So what I'm doing here is I'm taking the part where I go through the proof and I just condensed it down, took out a lot of quotes, try to keep it within range.

Sure. But then I also did a talk on Wittgenstein and why he's a gift to Christian apologetics. That was that actually LBC of Mark Farnham's class a few weeks ago. That's also on that website. Mark's cheering you on.

He's saying, go, John. Oh, great. Great. All right. So, yeah, so that so this that teaching is there. And what's fascinated me from the start of this journey was. The the actual argument, so how what exactly is it like if you if you were to narrow down every term that's used and inference and lay it out for me on a on a table and can I can I see everything like I don't want there to be any ambiguity, where is the starting point, how do we get there?

And I wasn't equipped to do that, but but I wanted that. And so this this presentation is 10 years of basically leaving apologetics, getting into philosophy, discovering Wittgenstein and what he said about language, which is essential to understand the foundation of Anto's apologetic, how to defend it.

We'll talk about that here. Sure. And then also logic. Logic was essential and how to craft the actual argument. So. Well, excellent.

Well, let's jump right in. So your slides look nice.

And yeah, two things I had I had drawn for me. So they don't exist in the world. That is awesome. That is awesome.

Well, I'm going to give it over to you. You just unpack. You can give us your presentation and just every so often I might interject with a question or a point of clarification.

But go for it. The floor is yours. Yeah, sounds good. So I think it's important it's important to before we get into the argument to go through the literature briefly of Bonson and Antill, what are the key components of the argument?

Because they never actually list them anywhere where here are all the things you need to hit to make this argument work. And so I think it's helpful to go through that list and then to see if I make good on it.

So is this Vantillian or not? Well, let's see what they said about the argument and then go through the argument and then circle back and see if everything was was met. So the first thing and this is going to be old hat for.

Scripture as the Starting Point and the Authority of Christ

Oh, there we go. It's going to be old hat for a lot of people, but that's that's OK. The first one is starting with the Bible, so that's clearly communicated in Bonson Vantill all over the place. We don't come to scripture later on.

It's it's our starting at our authority from the beginning of our argument is the authority of Christ as expressed in in scripture. So in the first place, I believe that Christian apologetics, in particular, reformed apologetics is not really transcendental in its method unless it says at the outset of its dialogue with nonbelievers that the Christian position must be accepted on the authority of the self-identifying Christ of scripture.

Bonson, therefore, the authority of Christ and his word rather than intellectual autonomy, must govern the starting point and method of his apologetics, as well as its conclusion. Likewise, the presumptional argument does not first debate the formal possibility of a book from God, but rather begins the argument from the outset with the actuality of the Bible.

All right, so we all know that that's that's a pretty basic one component of this. The next one, which I don't think is talked about as much, is that you can use truths. That are in literature that are in like natural language, how that's supposed to work, that are not necessarily stated explicitly in the Bible, but are consistent with the Bible, and that's really important to understand.

Because you say we start with scripture, but do we have any other assumptions we can start with? Do they all have to be just what scripture teaches? And the answer is no. So let's let's see that this is Bantill, this does not imply that philosophy and science must be exclusively dependent upon theology for their basic principles.

It implies only that philosophy and science must, as well as theology, turn to scripture for whatever light it has to offer. So it always has to be scripture as our standard. We can we can get truths from all over the place, but they're all they have to be consistent with scripture.

It says we all make assumptions. This is key, but we alone do not make false assumptions. I find it a hang up from some Bantillians that they don't want to concede that they start with assumptions. You have to start with assumptions.

All arguments start with assumptions. You cannot get away from it. And Bantill admits this. We all make assumptions, but we alone do not make false ones. I like that. Worded well. The question is as to who makes the right assumptions.

And Bonson, in terms of the analogy, the new and he's he's actually it's actually a footnote. Bantill is talking about I think it's Paul and the architecture. So we can use the building materials of unbelievers, but the plan of how to use those materials is, you know, it's God's.

So you're basically putting every data point within the context of a biblical worldview.

Yeah, correct. Correct. So so there could be some truth. And I think Wittgenstein did this. He found a wonderful truth in how language functions. And we'll get into some of that a little bit. But he didn't do it necessarily from a Christian perspective.

But it is definitely true. This is how God made language to function. And Wittgenstein nails it in philosophical investigations. And so that's a tool that we should use then when we're doing apologetics, entirely consistent with with Christianity.

All right. And Wittgenstein might have been a Christian at the end of his life. We don't we don't know. That's for another another day. All right. He says that presupposition. Yeah. So if argumentation is going to be possible, we need not just any presupposition, but we require clearly revealed and universally necessary ones.

Or you call them transcendentals presuppositions that scripture declares God has provided all men. Only the Christian, depending upon the verbal revelation of God, can be assured that God has revealed certain unquestionable truths to all men in all ages.

So it is not inconsistent with presuppositional apologetics to pick self-evident truths. But they are only self-evident and they only work in God's world and the Christian interpretation of the world.

And that's that's a key difference here. So we're not trying to get some like autonomous view of reasoning where we we we intuitively pick out truths in the world and somehow they hang by themselves. And then we go from there to God.

We're not talking about that, but we don't throw out the truth just because we throw out the method. And that's key to to latch on to. The third point is the argument is sufficient for rational certainty.

It blows my mind that people call themselves Vantillians, but yet hold the probability apologetics. Vantill and Bonson could not be clear that this argument is not probabilistic. And if your argument is, then it's not Vantillian.

And I go into that in great detail with frame in my Sunday school. But the argument must be sufficient for, they would say, rational or I would say epistemic certainty. That's key here. It's sufficient for certainty.

It doesn't mean you're going to have it right. You can you can irrationally reject it. I can't force you to hold this. But the argument as it stands is sufficient for rational certainty if you want to accept it.

All right. And they don't lay out those components, but here's how I would. Well, let me just put hope until here is an insult to living God to say that his revelation of himself so lacks in clarity that man himself through and through a revelation of God does justice by it when he says that God probably exists.

But the best and only possible proof for the existence of such a God is that his existence is required for the uniformity of nature and for the coherence of all things in the world. And in Bonson, Vantill aims for rational certainty while his critics settle for less, namely probability.

All right, so what makes an argument epistemically certain? Well, here's how I would use that term. So the first component would be an argument is epistemically certain if it's deductively valid. What that means is that if the premises are true, the conclusion has to be true.

There's no it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. It is deductively valid. So here's an example. If the Bible is true, then Jesus Christ is the son of God. The Bible is true.

Therefore, Jesus Christ is the son of God. Both premises are true. The conclusion has to follow from the premises. Now, you can have an argument that's deductively valid that you want to reject. So if the Bible is false, then Jesus Christ is not the son of God, the Bible is false.

Therefore, Jesus Christ is not the son of God. There is nothing illogical about this argument. Christians many times will say, well, that's just illogical. It's not illogical. I would say it's irrational, but it is not illogical.

What makes it irrational is that it takes it has a false premise. Premise two is obviously false, but this is logically true. This argument is a correct inference.

Formally, you're talking about the structure of the argument.

The structure is true. If the premises are true, the conclusion has to be true. But of course, the premises aren't true. Premise two is false. Does that make sense? Yeah. OK, so we would call that then an unsound argument.

It's valid, but unsound. OK, but it's but it's but that but validity, though, is an important component. It's not everything, but it is necessary if you're going to have epistemic certainty. How you get to your conclusion has to be without error, or else it would be probability.

It would be I have a really good reason for getting to my conclusion, but I don't have one that's infallible. I could be wrong. Well, if you could be wrong, then, you know, it's not rationally certain.

It's not epistemically certain. OK. All right. So the next component is that the falsehood, this is key, of any axiom leads to absurdity. So we start with these assumptions and they have to be such that if you were to deny them, it pulls down the game.

Which is stronger than just saying, well, you can't deny them, it's that the to even utter the falsehood of them, of it brings down the game we're playing. So in mathematics, if you were to deny one of the axioms of, let's say, standard set theory or or even starting points in calculus or other points like that, it would pull down, like it would cause absurdity, that they are so obviously true.

Now, they don't prove them, though, because they're assumptions. They're assumptions in the argument, but they're so obviously true that to deny them would destroy everything. All right. So and we're going to get into that.

How do you how do you defend axioms when you can't prove them? So we'll get into that a little a little later. But these axioms have to you may call them indubitable. You get their different names. And people get technical about this and say, well, just because you can't deny it doesn't mean that it's true.

Axioms, Definitions, and the Structure of the Argument

Can I ask a question real quick, because I know my audience, when they hear axiom, they think Clark and then they hear presupposition.

Yeah, they throw it out of your mind.

OK, so when you're using axiom here, could we equate just for understanding what you're saying there as kind of a Vantillian presupposition, a.

Kind of an axiom needs to be broad. It's an axiom is an assumption in the argument. OK, OK. So that's all an axiom is. If you have an assumption and I'm going to make this distinction later because there are assumptions that are outside the argument and a lot of confusion comes in when we start jumping from assumptions in the argument to assumptions outside of the argument.

And we don't clarify that we're switching. What's going on? We're switching worlds here. We're going in and out of two worlds. OK, so, yeah. So axiom is an assumption within the argument. All right. Third would be the definitions, which all all arguments have definitions, but not all.

So all all arguments have definitions, but not all terms in arguments are defined. So all arguments have undefined terms. Which we can get into if we need to. So it's not wrong to have terms undefined.

I find that funny when atheists try to pin Christians with undefined terms. It's inevitable. And I get into that in my Wittgenstein lecture. Anyway, so the definitions need to be not disputable. What do I mean by that?

Well, you cannot define a term that would pull down the game that we're playing. So in mathematics, for example, the definition of number has been greatly clarified and made more precise over time, especially in the 19th century by Gottlob, Frege and some other logicians, but especially Frege.

And that's improved over the last 140 years. But the definitions, so so they got better definitions than previously. Well, it's making what definite good definitions they do is they make the world that you're in clear.

You can see things clear and you can get to truth better. Many times it opens it up to you. So those are good. So you can have better definitions and worse definitions like that's fine. But a disputable definition.

And I'm I guess I'm pointing this this use of this term. But this is the best way to put it. It pulls down the game like I could define certain terms in mathematics such that mathematics as we know it would be gone.

Sure. And that's that's not acceptable. Like you're not allowed to do that. So then natural language, you could define terms in such a way where they have no they're not tethered to the common man. But that's what you're supposed to be arguing is in this world of how we commonly operate with language.

Well, if you pick definitions that are foreign to this world that have no business operating in there, that would be a disputable definition. It would pull down our game. Anyway, so that's but those are the three components that I would say need to be there when you.

Are doing that argument. All right, let me just let me just interject just to let folks know we've got more people in I'm speaking with John Kaus. He is leading us through a a a tiptoeing journey through a van Til's transcendental argument.

And he's doing it very well, I might add, with some pretty neat slides. I got to ask for some advice here. I love I love his his presentation here. But before we continue, I do want to remind people that if you have any questions for John, he'll be taking questions at the back end of this episode.

I don't want to interrupt him too much as he is giving us his presentation here. So if you have a question, preface your question with question and we'll try our best to get to some of them at the end.

Just real quick. I'm going to minimize this real quick, John, and just let people know. Once again, there are there are only eight days left for people to sign up for the epic online presub conference in which myself, Jason Lyle, Chris Bolt, Matt Slick and Joshua Pillows will be giving presentations on various topics relating to presuppositionalism.

So if you're looking to support revealed apologetics, it is greatly appreciated. You can do that by going to revealed apologetics dot com, clicking on the presub you drop down button and RSVP. It would be greatly appreciated and it's going to be excellent.

So I'm very much looking forward to that. All right, John, you're doing an excellent job. You're speaking with clarity. Your presentation is easy to follow, and I'm excited to hear more of what you have to say.

So the floor is yours once more.

OK, so the fourth point would be axioms are knowable prior to acknowledging the conclusion. So these are things where we would start with assumptions where if you brought them individually to an atheist, he'd have no problem accepting them.

Sure. And so that's where we'll get into those. But just to show you that Bonson taught this, he said it should be clear from the context here that Van Til meant to claim more than that, the argument is valid.

That is, conclusion necessarily follows from the premises. In the first place, the strong kind of argument that he is advocating would also be sound. Its premises would be true. We talked about this. He says, moreover, the truth of its premises.

Or the or the soundness of secondary, tertiary, et cetera, arguments for those premises is acknowledged or knowable without prior acknowledgement or statement of the conclusion. So you can know the premises are true or you could believe them.

And you wouldn't necessarily see that. Oh, I have to accept the conclusion first or with it. I should say first with it, would it accept it with it? And he says this is a genuine cognitive advance with beginning because things which the unbeliever will acknowledge turn out without him realizing it upon analysis to require or apply that or imply the truth of the Christian worldview.

So that's what we're we're going to do. Now, the last point is often talked about. So the middle three don't aren't talked about a lot. First one is talked about. And then so is the last one. But the middle three don't seem to be talked about much.

But you have to hit all of these. The fifth one is you may not assume the truth of the conclusion as an axiom. You cannot assume the truth of the conclusion. Sometimes people call them premises. I don't like calling premises because if you give me two premises and I say, well, why are they true or why should I believe them?

And then if you give me additional arguments, well, you just proved your premises. So they're not axioms that they're not assumptions. And many times you can't find what assumptions people are using because you just don't have time to dig deep enough.

And I think a lot of people when they present arguments don't actually know what their assumptions are. They they're they go unstated somewhere for someone else to try to try to find. So I don't like the term premise.

I mean, I don't like the term is fine, but it could be a premise. Could be an assumption. You could have a premise that you in fact, I'm going to have one here and the argument will be one that I do not prove is assumed to be true.

But you also think of premises that are proven, which we would call theorems. But anyway, so but you may not assume the truth of the conclusion as an axiom. You probably hear that saying as a premise.

Sure. All right. So. And Bantill is pretty clear on this. And this brings up the point of circular reasoning. The charge is constantly made that if matters stand, thus with Christianity, it has written its own death warrant as far as intelligent men are concerned.

Who wishes to make such a simple blunder in elementary logic as to say that we believe something to be true because it is in the Bible? And this is pretty straightforward. We are familiar with this, right?

Why is the Bible true? Because it's true. We don't accept that as an argument because you haven't gone anywhere. You're supposed to prove you're supposed to write all proofs of reasoning that are inferences.

You're going from a starting point to another point to your goal. Well, if you're already at your goal, then you don't have to go anywhere. Right. OK, so it's not an argument.

You are where you where you want to be. So you're not doing it. But isn't that what the presupposition list is saying? The Bible is true. The Bible is true. This is no here from everybody.

No, I think I have visually to state it where I'm not that this is going to, like, remove these misunderstandings. Right. But I found it the most helpful way to to present it. And we get into Richard Howe here at the end.

OK, Dr. Howe and his ontology versus epistemology objection. And that's all a misunderstanding of the circularity problem. Sure. Well, and I'll get into that a little later. Vantill actually coined this term spiral reasoning, spirally circular.

And I think it's it's the best I've seen. I've read a lot of transcendental literature and people on circular argumentation, and I think it's I think it's the best term. I think we should use it. I think it should be just ubiquitous in anywhere.

Anyway, so he called it. So it's not reasoning. Oh, let me just this first sentence. He says, our answer to this is briefly that we prefer to reason in a circle to not reasoning at all. So that's Vantill's little jab, you know, at people.

He's not. People will take that. So I see he's promoting vicious circular reasoning or formal circular reasoning, as I would call it. It's like, no, he's not. He's just being cute. Like, he's just he's just poking.

He's being fun. He he clearly distinguishes it and calls it spiral reasoning. We must go around and around a thing to see more of its dimensions and to know more about it in general, unless we are larger than that, which we are investigating, unless we are larger than God.

We cannot reason about him any other way than by a transcendental or circular argument. The refusal to admit the necessity of circular reasoning is itself an evident token of opposition to Christianity.

Reasoning in a vicious circle is the only alternative to reasoning in a circle as discussed above. This is really important. We're going to get this later. Vicious circular reasoning, which is fallacious.

It's all the unbeliever has. Christians, in contrast to that, have spiral circular reasoning, which makes, you know, all reasoning intelligible. And we'll get it. We'll get into that.

Can I. I want to ask a quick question. You could just answer it super fast because I hear this all the time. Oh, vicious circularity versus virtuous circularity. These are just made up terms that presuppositional use so that they can just have an excuse for their circular reasoning.

I wanted to briefly address why that's bunk. And then you can move on because I think that I hit it at the end. OK. All right.

It's all with Richard Howe and like I have all this. OK. All right. Circularity slide. So I don't want to I'm not going to do it better than when I'll do it there. So. OK. Sounds good. OK. So, yeah, we hold that our reasoning cannot fairly be called circular reasoning because we are not reasoning about this is key and seeking to explain facts by assuming the existence and meaning of certain other facts on the same level with those facts.

OK, so this is Vantill's way of saying it's not viciously circular. Sure. Watson says because there is more than one kind of circularity, Vantill sometimes repudiated and sometimes tolerated the notion that his apologetic was circular, which was undoubtedly which has undoubtedly been confusing to his readers and students.

And I agree. I think he could have been clearer on this. And I think Bonson at times could have been clearer. But, you know, we'll get into that. The circularity of a transcendental argument is not at all the same as the fallacious circularity of an argument in which the conclusion is a restatement of one of its premises, or I would say it's axiom.

Rather, it is the circularity required and one reasons about a precondition of reasoning. OK. Is this the same thing? All right. So the first two are sorry. One in five are commonly known with presubstantialists.

The middle three are rarely are rarely mentioned. But the by far the hardest part in making good of this argument that I have found, the first one is getting one in five to go together. We start with the Bible, but we can't assume it's truth.

In the argument. Because you can't assume the truth in the argument, because then that would be circular reason, how are you going to prove that Christianity is true if one of the premises of the Bible is the word of God?

Right. So, John, you'd make a distinction between having the conclusion and the premise versus the presupposition of the argument. So you have a presupposition that the Bible is true, but it's not one of the premises, lest your argument have a fallacious circular structure.

Correct. We're going to drill into this later in great detail and presupposition. I like the term. I think it's good and we should keep using it. It can cause confusion because presuppositions are not the same with Christians.

They don't behave the same, not just in content. They don't behave the same rationally with believers compared to unbelievers. So, well, I'll get into that later. But one of the hardest things is how do you how can you possibly start with what the Bible teaches?

But you can't assume it's truth in the argument. It's extremely difficult to do. The second thing that's really difficult is once you do that, how do you defend your starting point? Because you can't prove it.